


Five Times Mycroft Gave Up On Love and The Time It Wouldn't Give Up On Him

by Senket



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, M/M, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-05-31
Updated: 2011-05-31
Packaged: 2017-11-15 16:36:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/529332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Senket/pseuds/Senket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It only takes once.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Mycroft Gave Up On Love and The Time It Wouldn't Give Up On Him

Mycroft is fifteen and life is hard. His parents are always gone; she is an MI-5 agent, he a high-grade politician. They met because his life had been threatened and she had been charged to protect him, typical government/secret-agent romance. Considering they still led their lives same as always, Mycroft doubted they would spontaneously begin to be more present in his life.  
  
Despite his young age he’s already had a major hand in raising a child. Sherlock is feisty, curious and stubborn; even at eight years old he hates people for not seeing things the way he can and gets explosively angry when they react badly to him. Mycroft tries to be there for him, really he does, but he’s already completed his A-levels and it’s hard not to be resentful sometimes. He wanted to go to Cambridge but he couldn’t, because he has to take care of Sherlock. Puberty already wrecks enough havoc on his life without his trying to attend university and occupy his brother’s mind at the same time. (The nanny certainly can’t do it. Educated as she is, she just doesn’t have that Holmesian spark.) 

And then there’s Dick. ‘Dick’ is actually Richard Kenneth Laud III. He’s eighteen, like the rest of the entering Westminster student body, but he doesn’t treat Mycroft like a child. He’s not kind by any stretch, but he’s wickedly clever. He wheedles and seduces girls into writing his papers, coaxes and cajoles boys into doings his projects, flirts and fawns his way into easy ‘A’s, all with absolute confidence. It doesn’t hurt that he’s gorgeous, with broad shoulders and a narrow waist, the smile of a serpent and the eyes of a siren, sparking and green and _alive._ He’s sharp, smart, sassy and deliciously shallow. Most of all, he gets along with Sherlock, trading the boy’s ‘I know what you did last night’s with ‘yes, and it was a thousand times more exciting than what _you_ did, little boy,’ grinning like a shark and ruffling Sherlock’s messy curls. Dick is fucking perfect.

Mycroft wakes in the middle of the night panting for him.

Dick doesn’t try to play Mycroft because he knows Mycroft is far too smart not to catch on. Sometimes he runs a ‘scam’ near Mycroft, winks at the boy when his target falls hook, line and sinker. It’s their secret: Dick is a dick and Mycroft is the only one who knows.

Mycroft learns an astounding amount of tricks from Laud, tricks that combine and fuse with his astounding powers of observation into the terrifyingly subtle manipulative skills that will serve Mycroft for the rest of his life.

At fifteen he doesn’t imagine he’ll ever use them, not seriously.

On his sixteenth birthday, Richard Kenneth Laud III helps him celebrate by getting them both smashed drunk and having some absolutely mind-blowing sex.

Mycroft is completely enchanted.

Just short of four months later, Mycroft tracks Dick down to the library, hoping for a quick shag. Dick is busy flirting with a twenty-year-old boy from the advanced calculus class; Mycroft doesn’t care, Dick flirts with everything and always gets something out of it. It’s their secret.

But Mycroft has fantastic powers of observation and he’s already given to watching Dick’s every move.

It takes him less than a minute to determine that the two are mocking someone- someone else that has fallen for Dick’s tricks.   
  
Mycroft smiles to himself, waxing poetic about the young man's boldness. He’s seen Dick do that before: ‘clearly I’m not tricking _you_. Why would I tell you how I do it, if I were?’ Dick’s very charismatic, so somehow instead of getting suspicious they get drawn further in. 

It takes Mycroft less than five minutes to make out the vowels their mouths are forming, despite grinning and laughing- he goes hot and cold all at once, a trickle of ice shards digging down his throat and into his stomach, because they’re talking about _him_.

For the first time in his life, he feels so damned _stupid_.  
  
Richard Laud finds Mycroft hours later when then adolescent is leaving his economics class. Laughing he tumbles them into the bathroom, presses Mycroft into the wall, finds the muscles in his neck with white teeth. Mycroft tenses under him, shoves him off, tries to leave. Richard, far stronger than the young boy, drags him back.  
  
Mycroft starts to yell but Richard only laughs. "So brilliant and yet so naive," he says. Mycroft sees red, and then nothing but white.  
  
It takes two weeks but not a moment longer- Richard Kenneth Laud III finds himself barred from Westminster. His transcripts reflect the amount of work he's been doing for himself and not a thing more. No member of faculty has a single good thing to say about him. No high-grade university will consider admitting him.  
  
In those two weeks Mycroft doesn't speak a word to anyone. Sherlock shouts and screams and throws things and then turns quiet and morose. Their mother comes home in a rush because the governess has told her of her sons' black moods.  
  
Mycroft decides he'll never let anyone close enough to make a fool of him ever again.  


 


End file.
